English · Word pair Candidate

smoke and mirrors

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Deception.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Lừa dối

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

ROME – A game of smoke and mirrors: this is how Italy ’s current electoral campaign appears – both to Italians and the wider world.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Topics: Fire

Common questions

What does “smoke and mirrors” mean?

Deception.

Is “smoke and mirrors” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

👁 Views 0 today 0 past 7 days 0 this month 0 all time